Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday March 13, 2013 @04:42PM
from the you-can-trust-us dept.

New submitter KrisJon writes "The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters. Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of 'suspicious customer activity.' A move like the FinCEN proposal 'raises concerns as to whether people could find their information in a file as a potential terrorist suspect without having the appropriate predicate for that and find themselves potentially falsely accused,' said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Rule of Law Program at the Constitution Project, a non-profit watchdog group."

He campaigned for "hope" and "change". FP was making a pun. To me, it's ironic that Obama originally campaigned for increased transparency... libs interpreted that as "the government will be transparent to us" but now Obama's like "Sic! Citizens are transparent to the government!"

At first I was going to refute you and give a quickie wiki citation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism [wikipedia.org] but, then I read it and saw far too many similarities in the current "regime" to be able to let loose with a sarcastic " PULEEEAZUH!I don't see us pushing the weak aside for living space, but I don't have to think for a second to find current analogs most of the rest. Not exactly the government that the left figured they were voting in, huh?Hollywood should be going broke soon, all we have to do is open our eyes in the morning to get a 3D horror show.Funny , I don't feel like joking now...

It seems like this always happens... President does bad, bad things (fascism,perhaps). New candidate promises change and reform... Get elected, does the same bad bad things or worse.

So my theory is that whenever a new president is elected, they are taken into an office for "the talk." I have no idea, but would guess that it has something to do with nuclear weapons, aliens that look just like humans, Atlantis, and Elvis. After "the talk" the new president changes his underwear and gladly goes along with what the previous president did.

No evidence, but it does seem to fit my observations that no president takes us further away from fascism.

90+% of those going into politics are power hungry and relatively rich. They care only for more money and more pwoer. It does not matter if they are democain , repucrate, socialist, libs, communist, facism, neo nazi or whatever country they are in. The political process is self filtering and self selecting the sewage waste greedy corrupt to come up. Some are just much better at hiding they are as bad as the rest, and still fool other people. Some are less able. They will tell the populist things to do during the election, but care only for the end results : the power and money. Yep I am very cynical.

I guess another benefit of this will be, they can now much more easily see who the big contributors are, and if they aren't giving to your campaign (or after campaign organization to keep paying for access to the White House through Organizing for Action [huffingtonpost.com] ) then you must be looked at as supporter of people against you.

I"m guessing this is a cleverly disguised tool to help persecute your enemies, as that I'm reasonable sure this data doesn't have the strict need to see regulations that say, medical data like HIPAA gets.

But hey, in the larger picture, this is no surprise, I mean, he went back and voted for protections on the telcos from the unwarranted wiretaps starting from his predecessor and continuing on.

And he's also hesitant to say they'd never use a drone to take a US citizen out on US soil....and....

Well, like the earlier post said, how's the hope and change working out for ya?

And he's also hesitant to say they'd never use a drone to take a US citizen out on US soil....and....

You must have missed the follow up.

Dear Senator Paul:

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional qustion: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.

But he hasn't answered the follow up to the follow up: define "engaged in combat". Judging by current trends, the definition might get pretty creative, or include "preparing to engage in combat" based on the say-so of some jerk off in the executive branch. Just because we survived the British Empire, the Civil War, the Kaiser, the Nazis, the Japanese Empire and the USSR with the Constitution more or less intact doesn't mean we can continue with that luxury. Now we face a serious enemy, don't ya know?

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional qustion: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.

Sincerely,
Eric Holder

So, what exactly does "not engaged in combat" mean to this administration, given their rather interesting interpretation of the word "imminent"?

Note, by the way, that when I read the article that Holder was "responding" to, the whole "not in combat" thing was included in the original query by Paul, but at that time, Holder could not be pinned down to a "no".

Note that he wasn't pinned down to a "no" in his answer either, since there is pretty much no situation where someone is actually "in combat" in the USA where anyone is going to be asking the President for permission to wax him - the local SWAT team will handle it quite nicely without consulting with the Pres....

The first sentence is a lie; First, this was not just coming to his attention, and second it was not a new question... Eric Holder had been asked repeatedly and kept dodging a straight answer. His people told congress moths ago that Obama had authority to kill Americans with drones (and Obama had done it) that this included people in non-combat situations (like the US citizen teenage son of an American who Obama had killed with a drone) and they had also (separately) said that the entire world was now the modern battlefield; all of this led to the very natural question about drone-striking an American within the US.... and administration officials were first asked about drone-striking Americans within the US about 3 months ago. Every Obama admin person who responded to the questions in congress either gave a different answer or pointed at some other official ("ask him...") so Holder is just being a dishonest jerk when he pretends this is a new question or that it has just come to his attention.

This is what we get for putting a terrorist's lawyer (Eric Holder sought-out and voluntarily represented terrorists who'd killed Americans before becoming Obama's Atty Gen) in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice

BTW: Obama does lots of things he has no authority to do (like taking over car companies, voiding their stocks, and replacing their CEOs) safe in the knowledge that his buddy Harry Reid will block any attempt to stop him in the Senate...... So the Holder letter is essentially meaningless

"Well, like the earlier post said, how's the hope and change working out for ya?"

Terribly. And yet, marginally better than what was promised by his opposition:

Romney on drone attacks -- "I support that entirely and feel the president was right to up the usage of that technology and believe that we should continue to use it to continue to go after the people who represent a threat to this nation and to our friends.” [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-05/why-drones-stayed-out-of-sight-in-the-2012-campaign.html]

Romney on military cuts -- "This is unacceptable. And the idea of shrinking our active duty personnel by 100,000 or 200,000 — I want to add 100,000 to active duty personnel." [http://cnsnews.com/news/article/romney-decries-military-cuts-obama-talking-jobs]

In 2006 the Democrats took over both the House and the Senate. In Nov 2006, after the election but while Republicans still held the House, Democrats announced that they would not cooperate with Republicans any further (since they were getting total congressional power in only 2 months) and they pronounced the FY2007 budgets (all the congressional financial work of 2006) "dead".... the nation ran those next several months on a "continuing resolution". Pelosi became Speaker of the House and she put Barney Frank in charge of the committee responsible for overseeing the finance industry. Harry Reid became Senate Majority Leader and he put Chris Dodd in charge of the Senate committee responsible for financial oversight. The 2007 and 2008 budgets were the ones the Democrats wrote in Congress. In 2007 The Bush Administration saw problems brewing in the home loan markets and the danger of crazy irresponsible actions over at the Government's home loan entities "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" but Bush had no legal authority to intervene... so Bush sent hes people to capitol hill to ask for legal authority to intervene. Chris Dodd led the Senate charge to deny Bush any control over Fannie and Freddie. EVERY democrat (including Senator Obama and Senator Biden) voted not to allow Bush any ability to regulate Fannie or Freddie. In The House, Barney Frank berated, belittled and insulted the Bush representatives who were asking for legal authority... Frank insisted nothing was wrong in the home mortgage business and particularly not at Fannie and Freddie. A year later, the mortgage mess exploded and the economy melted down. Barack Obama and Joe Biden had a bigger say in the meltdown (THEY got to vote to avoid it and THEY voted the wrong way) than Bush had (He had no vote and no legal power to intervene before the meltdown).

Romney is a tool; he would have only been marginally better than Obama, at best

Obama, however, is a nasty piece of work. His policies lead to the need for ever increasing government power, control, and money.... so he cannot avoid the continual drive to spy on the people, pry into their finances, examine their health, dig into their businesses, etc

It probably is increased transparency. Instead of the NSA or whatever doing this sort of thing already and everybody trying to weasel out of taking responsibility for it you get a bald declaration of what is already happening. IMHO it's the Bush status quo only with an attempt at running it properly instead of just going on vacation all of the time and pretending everything is somebody else's problem. Did you guys really expect anything other than "just keep it running and make a few little improvements"

People can call Obama what they want, but I don't see him as hiding his agenda. Read his books.

He is a progressive, through and through.Government is good. If there are problems, it just means we haven't found the right bureaucratic apparatus to solve it. Expert panels. Management of people lives. People working for the state for the benefit of the society at large.

In reality, he is more intellectually consistent that those who criticize him.

Half the people here probably support universal healthcare and expert run panels to determine healthcare outcomes. They probably support public education and all kinds of mandates

Well... you entrust the government to do so much good with your heathcare, with your children... why wouldn't you do the same with your security and finances?

I think far too many people put their own vision on what Obama stands for instead of actually listening to the man in his speeches and his writings.

Or he could have voted for Romney. Anyone who thought he'd be an improvement is naive. It was heads they win tails we're screwed. That's the beautiful two party system for you. Two fucked choices both backed by banks and hollywierd.

I just follow the money dude. The banks gave Romney a pile of money but it was a much smaller pile than they gave the President. You really think those guys don't get anything for all those bucks they pile up? Small banks are suffering and getting swallowed by the big banks who are flooding the coffers of both parties. Maybe you think they aren't getting their money's worth but I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing.

He's the one that started all this Gestapo stuff. President Obama is just Bush 2.0 except for some of the liberal stuff like a gay army and unisex marriages they look pretty much the same. Just enough to divide and conquer the American people on knee jerk social issues that keep them from focusing on how their freedoms are being stripped just a little at a time. All in the name of keeping us all safe.

He's more than Bush 2.0. He took what was radical under GWB, and made it the "New Normal." Before Obama, there was hope that the abuses of the previous administration could be rolled back. That is no longer possible because those abuses are now firmly ensconced in those issues that form the bipartisan consensus. As a result, expect to hear virtually nothing about them from most of the cheerleader/stenographer "press" corps. It's sickening the way Democrats as whole have just clammed up during the Obama administration, and proof that their rhetoric during the GWB administration was nothing but hot air designed to fraudulently attract liberal voters so that they, like the GOP, could go agro-neo-con on America. There is no way back now -- only through to what comes next.

From what I wrote in 2008 before I'd heard about "basic income", with a a typo and a rotted link fixed: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/openmanufacturing/a4Fw5A15GUE/wQbnjYso09sJ [google.com] ----Something I wrote in another list, but I am posting a variant here in public in part as a contribution towards [Nathan Craven's] work on an open enterprise, moving towards an open society. This is to support a transition to a post-scarcity future.

If privacy is history anyway, and Congress has turned radical, why not at least get something good out of that all instead of just watching all the money go to the already wealthy through bailouts?

Umm... I think you misunderstand the current purpose of the US Government. It has been redesigned to spy on and should they object, oppress, the masses in order for those with the right connections to profit and avoid any accountability, financial or criminal. THAT is the entire purpose of the Federal Governmen

That would be awesome to do just for the fun of adding a false positive, but then I realized I have no damn use for the propane. I grill with charcoal (tastes better; sorry, Hank Hill). I hate the police state as much as anyone, but you're talking about wasting money! Let's not get carried away.

I agree with your statements. The answer to your question on where am I going to get my supplies is 'from my neighbor who doesn't believe in gun ownership and thinks the cops will show during a crisis.'

What a juvenile point of view. People like you are the first to die in any crisis - not only are you unwilling to participate in a community to survive, you automatically jump to violence against those who do not threaten you the moment you perceive your life to be threatened. It's like throwing the guy in the cubicle next to you out the window because the building is on fire; you perceive yourself to be ahead of them on the way to the door, but the entire community will now work against you.
It simply does not matter how well-armed and prepared you are, either, life is full of examples of people, societies, and even entire species gone by the wayside for being overly aggressive and unwilling to change to their environment. So while you may be able to steal someone's can of beans at gunpoint, eventually you will either run into someone like yourself or someone who knows exactly what you are, and there is only one possible outcome.
Start thinking about how you can keep your neighbours alive during any sort of crisis, and I promise you will live much, much longer.

If they haven't done it already, I'm sure they will soon do something like the following: We will lower the transactions fees for using debit/credit cards if you send us a list of items sold. (doesn't have to be with the transaction, just some time later would be sufficient, i.e. on a weekly or monthly basis). Though, now that I think about it more, it will go: We will RAISE the transaction fees unless you share the list of items sold...

As someone who has worked with several major processors and manages millions of credit/debit transactions per year, I'd consider that extraordinarily unlikely. It would take several years to implement, and would cripple the current infrastructure if attempted.

you have such a short attention span that you do not see trends if they advance slowly enough.

This nation is already NOTHING like what it was in the 1960's.

There was no such thing as "hate speech"... you were free to speak your mind and others were free to dislike what you said. In Communist nations, people are generally intimidated into self-regulating their speech; this is a related behavior.

"Politically correct" speech only existed in Communist countries. People would tell you something false (like "there's plenty of toilet paper at the store") and quietly say that this was obviously false but that it was "politically correct" (i.e. the people in power said it was so, so naturally it was important to parrot the line). Americans used to laugh at this tragic irrationality imposed upon people in totalitarian nations. Now we have it here. It is a necessity in communist systems.

You used to be able to run into an airport on a whim, buy a one-way ticket for cash, run to the gate and board the plane carrying nearly anything that would fit in the overhead bin. No Microwaves, no X-Rays, no grope-fests, no metal detectors, etc. Planes were not falling from the skies. Now a visit to an airport looks like a visit to a 1960's Moscow train station; you stand in line like cattle... you cannot shake the feeling that there's a Progressive "Political Officer" somewhere nearby keeping an eye on everything....

Americans used to live in a "free market" system... you could use any amount of water or energy you wanted as long as you paid for it. If you used larger amounts, you got a volume discount. Now, because luddites have intimidated government and business entities into not building enough power plants and water plants political considerations have infected everything (as happens in communist nations) and so we no longer have all the power and water we need... so big brother keeps propagandizing us to use LESS and the rates for use go UP with volume (the opposite of what happens in free markets). Our children are propagandized to view business as evil and businessmen as selfish and greedy

Americans used to get excellent and affordable healthcare; doctors used to make house calls. As government has become more-involved, access has become more difficult and costs have spiraled. When govt gives "free" healthcare to illegal aliens, and promises to give seniors X care (and claims credit for providing it) but only pays hospitals and doctors 0.5X, those costs get added to the bills of the people with private insurance, which must then raise rates. The people get mad at the private insurers for the rate increases, and Obama has played this masterfully to get the dumbest slice of the public to vote for communist healthcare... which is what they'll get after the interim step of Obamacare (which is not designed to be a sustainable permanent solution, but rather to destroy private healthcare and leave people with healthcare needs but no private infrastructure)

Americans used to be able to take a couple thousand dollars and start a business in a garage that could grow into an empire (think HP, or Apple). Now, with all the thousands of regulations and all the bureaucracies (run by czars, no less) this is becoming very difficult; it's easier to get a government job, and the pay and benefits are now better in government than in the private sector (this was never true before in the U.S.)

Americans used to have full constitutional rights, including with guns. Lots of kids took guns to school (some because they had shooting clubs there, some because they were going hunting after school, some because they had been hunting before school, and some simply because the guns were with their other stuff or in their cars/trucks and it simply would not occur to them that the presence of a gun was any issue to anybody. Now our government-run schools are kicking kids out or having their mental health checked if they draw a picture of a gun or use their fingers and thumbs like a

The only reason I stick with the bank I have is I've paid my child support with it over the years and I want to keep doing it this way so I can prove it on down the line. I actually started with a different bank, but buyouts/mergers, what have you. I liked the bank I signed up with.

Classic 4th amendment, but the 4th has been raped for about 30 years now in the name of the War on Drugs with no complaints. NYC allows stop-and-frisk which is by the letter a violation of the 4th as are most unwarranted searches by law enforcement. It's simple, you can't search me, my house, my car, or my records without a warrant. But, every time a big bad drug dealer gets away "on a technicality" people agree to turn the other way and allow laws to encroach just a bit further on our rights.

When Obama ran for President the first time around, he promised repeatedly to end warantless wiretapping and protect our privacy. During the same campaign, he actually voted as a senator to extend warantless wiretapping. When called out on this outright lie, he said he no choice, because the bill would pass either way. Frankly, this is a stupid excuse. If it would pass either way, what harm would there be in being honest and voting against it like he said he would?

Then once in the White House, one of his first Executive Orders was actually to extend the power of the program. We also know have warrantless GPS tracking and spy drones over US soil.

The argument for voting for Obama was in theory that we couldn't afford a Republican candidate because they would do these things. The reality is that blinding voting either party often turns out bad.

Look at the records of the past three Presidents and you'll see that they don't fall into traditional party stereotypes:

George W. Bush* He spent like mad and created new government bureacracy (Homeland Security). A Republican spent more and supported Bigger Government.* Created a tax credit for solar panels and hybrid cars. A Republican was anti-oil and pro-environment.* Increased stem cell research. Pro-science (and Republicans are supposed to be anti-stem-cells!)* Increased NASA budget. Pro-science!* Passed clean air and water acts in his first 100 days (after Clinton promised to for 8 years and didn't)* Penalized US automakers who didn't make hybrids* Pushed for higher fuel economy standards (Democrats pushed a much weaker version that Bush called for and oddly enough Obama fully supported Bush as a senator on this)* Helped prevent a war in Liberia and negotiated for a dictator to step down without bullets being fired* Argued immediately after 9/11 that we not blame Iraq and argued that people who were calling for war in Iraq should wait for facts to come out* Supported an open/transparent commission to study 9/11 with the full report being released to the public

Before him, Clinton:

* Bombed 4 countries without asking Congress for approval* Compromised with Newt Gingrinch to cut government spending to balance the budget. Yep, a Democrat worked towards smaller government.* Refused to push through clean air/water acts that were written and just waiting for a push despite promising to do so* Declared "banks were too big to fail" and pushed for what was then considered an illegal merger with Citbank and Travellers Insurance (by getting rid of the Glass-Steagall law thusly now making it legal). After this, Citigroup hired a bunch of politicians as lobbyists, and Clinton appointed Citigroup employees to government positions. Seriously.* Was accused of undisclosed massive donations not only from corporations that he hid, but also from the Chinese government. Hillary Clinton was then later also caught taking donations from the Chinese government. Seriously.

Obama:

* Refused to release the White House emails he promised to release when in office (despite all these claims of transparency)* Filled his cabinet with lobbyists after promising no Washington old-guard and no lobbyists* Screams about paying taxes when half his cabinet has been busted for not paying taxes* Supported an additional bail out with no real controls on how the money was handled by big banks, allowing CEOs who created the crisis to steal tax payer dollars* Refused to disclose where his big online campaign donations came from and won't support campaign transparency* Created warrantless GPS tracking and has spy drones on US soil* Promised to close Gitmo* His means of ending detainee torture was to order prisoners to be killed rather than kept in war. Real humane there.* Sent troops to Libya and Yemen when both Congress and the public opposed it* Cut NASA funding and cancelled missions

If you dig deeper into other politicians, you'll see this all the time. Harry Reid is one

Here's how it works. Banks are required by law to report transactions designated as "suspicious" (for example, cash transactions over $10,000). These reports are collected into a database called FinCEN. This database is run by the Treasury Department and certain agencies, like the FBI, have full access to it. Others, such as the CIA and the NSA have to make case by case requests for data. The new plan would give the CIA, NSA, and their ilk full access as well.

This is one government agency being given access to a government database collected by another government agency. Your own "persons, houses, papers, and effects" are not involved.

Oh come on, you think the government is paying any attention to that old piece of paper? For reference, here's the status of the Bill of Rights:

First Amendment - Completely gone. Protesters are beaten and maced by police, people are investigated and harassed for what they say on the Internet, political organizations are routinely infiltrated by government agents, people have been spied on and rounded up solely for practicing a particular religion, some religions receive special government funding,

Second Amendment - Severely restricted.

Third Amendment - Well, they haven't tried to quarter troops in people's homes in a long time. It's kinda quaint anyways: Why bother doing that when you can spy or blow up people's homes from far away.

Fourth Amendment - Gone. This latest article is just publicizing what they're already doing, namely electronically spying on everyone in the United States (Hello, NSA, by the way). And you can toss in the TSA searches, the border searches, the searches of people less than 100 miles from a border, and the recent complaints from police in Oregon and Colorado that they can no longer pull someone over on a slight pretext and search the vehicle by claiming to smell pot.

Fifth Amendment - Gone. Anwar al-Awlaki being the most obvious example, but you can also look at the routine harassment and even criminal prosecution of lawyers who defend certain people in court.

Sixth Amendment - Gone. Bradley Manning, enough said.

Seventh Amendment - Gone. In contracts between corporations and individuals, the courts have repeatedly ruled that the corporations can insist upon binding arbitration, with the arbitrator determined by the corporation. In other words, there's a second parallel legal system for anything important where one side gets to pick the judge.

Eighth Amendment - Gone. In addition to the aforementioned Bradley Manning, you can also look at Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, both US citizens thrown into Gitmo for many years without trial, where they were apparently tortured.

Total surveillance is the road to hell. Once the people have reached a suitable level of fear, those in power can do anything and everything. It does not take long to start killing off those deemed "undesired". Or better, lock them up and have the other pay for that. Already happening? Maybe the US voters are asleep at the wheel?

How you can you accuse them of being asleep at thw wheel when both the parties they can choose do the same sort of shenanigans? The only option they seem to have is the face on the TV that tells them nice stories while at the same time stripping away their civil liberties.

Other parties exist. It is the very twisted ideology of voting for the "winner" to "win" your election not unlike reality tv shows instead of voting with your heart. Add to that the medias who only cover the two flavors of corporate dictatorial parties to protect their friends and interest and you have a completely sick and twisted "democracy". Good luck with that, I am moving to sealand!

The military-industrial complex speech [youtube.com]. That alone tells me the man worked for his country, not for money or power, that he had the insight to pinpoint the danger to the country, and the balls to denounce it publicly.

Indeed. The process of establishing a "Reich" in the US is going far slower than the Germans managed it (after all, the Germans are far more effective at starting things than anybody else, they just have some trouble with finishing things, see, e.g., the two world wars they started), but it is well on its way. All the danger signs are there:- Killing of citizens without oversight: Check.- Massive secret police and total surveillance: Check- Due process suspended whenever those in power feel like it: Check.-

Wait--back up a minute here. I can understand that this topic in general is a stimulus for conversation about why the US government is a lot like Soviet Russia, but, it isn't like what we're hearing in this article is particularly revolutionary or surprising. What it says is that financial institutions have been required for a long time to report suspicious activity or accounts to the Department of the Treasury. This database has been accessible to the FBI all along. This was set up because the governme

What's it going to take for people to realize that Obama is just as bad as and in many ways worse than Bush?

I swear, Obama could issue an executive order mandating that they suck a dick and the apologists would just shrug and say "Yeah, but Bush would have made us swallow!"

It would be grand if people only had to live with the consequences of the policies they support.

LK

It would be even nicer if people understood that we have this thing called Congress, and that THEY are the ones who passed the laws which require your bank to report this activity in the first place.

"legal experts emphasize that this sharing of data is permissible under U.S. law. Specifically, banks' suspicious activity reporting requirements are dictated by a combination of the Bank Secrecy Act and the USA PATRIOT Act"

If you really must bitch, at least bitch about the right people. You retards are busy attacking what is essentially a Straw Man who will be gone forever in a few years, while the goons who actually are trashing your liberties keep getting elected term after term. It's not an especially clever plan, but it works every damn time... Congress gives power to the President to decide to implement an unpopular policy, he takes the blame and all you fucking idiots eat it up like candy.It's not the President's fucking budget, it's Congress's budget. It's not the President's Law... it's Congress's law. If you mental midgets can't figure this shit out it's never going to change.

Even if people realize it, doesn't matter. In 2015 they'll throw some bones (like they did in 2011), run some ads tapping themselves on the shoulder and people will vote for them again. Attention span is too short to remember things that happened more than a couple weeks ago.

(1) Rand Paul holds numerous horrendous positions. Therefore, it is impermissible ever to agree with or support him on any one specific issue. The minute one agrees with him on any one issue, one is infected with all his other views, no matter how much one disagrees with those other views.

(2) Barack Obama not only holds numerous horrendous positions, but actually does numerous heinous things (eg http://is.gd/5tKFC4,http://is.gd/GrHG86 [is.gd], http://is.gd/FpAt7a [is.gd], http://is.gd/kNa9D0 [is.gd], http://is.gd/CmXP4F [is.gd]). Nonetheless, it is not only permissible - but mandatory - to support him not just on an issue-by-issue basis but for his general empowerment. One is free to support him and cheer for him without being infected by any of his heinous views and actions with which one disagrees.

I would give a big prize to anyone who can come close to reconciling those lines of reasoning.

It's extremely simple: you support politicians in those instances when you agree with their views, and oppose them in those instances when you disagree with those views.

Literally, I could live to be 500 years old and never comprehend how so many progressives, who (by the way) reside in the reality-based community, are unwilling and/or unable to process this very basic proposition.

As a Libertarian, obviously I voted Gary Johnson. However, I think our best candidate from the two major parties in the past 8 years was McCain. But the Democrat spin at the time was McCain was Bush 2.0, and if you hated Bush, you had to vote against him. They said he would be pro-war and bad for the country.

McCain routinely called out Republicans while heading the ethics commission in D.C. After he was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he volunteered to go back to Vietnam as an ambassador and help end the war. He did the same thing in Korea. While Americans wanted to see the war in Iraq and Afghanistan ended, we had a president with strong military background (having served, and was raised by a 4-star Admiral), existing rapport with foreign leaders and experience ending wars. But the media said he'd probably be pro-war.

Americans wanted someone who would improve foreign relations, so we voted against he guy who had great rapport with foreign leaders, and voted for Obama who went on TV and made a joke about the Special Olympics, and who made fun of McCain's physical disabilities (a result of his POW torture). We have a President only capable of speaking off a teleprompter who makes offensive comments when off it. I don't see how that helps our rapport with foreign leaders.

McCain routinely crossed the aisle in D.C. and didn't care about party lines, but rather what was right. He promised to call out individual politicians in either party who added pork to bills.

He also said that instead of doing talk shows perhaps as a Senator, his first job should be working in D.C. to fix the economy, which Obama disagreed with. Apparently talk shows are more important than fixing the economy.

I get a number of reasons why people didn't like Romney, but it is a damn shame we elected Obama over McCain.

McCain made himself unelectable when he picked Palin as a running mate. Then the republicans shot themselves in the foot by offering Romney. All the while, the republican congress was doing its best to give us as many reasons as possible to not respect the republican brand. Your convention cheated Paul out of his moment in the sun, insignificant as it was in the light of the political atmosphere. On the other side, Obama was offering healthcare to a bunch of people who really needed it and had a record of doing a number of other things people liked.

You had enough advantages among the swing voters -- particularly with those who don't care about the health of others, and the homophobes, and those who would declare a fertilized egg a "baby" -- to win. But you pissed it away with bad choices, congressional malfeasance above and beyond the usual, and a running mate as crazy as anyone I've ever seen proffered for office.

It's that simple.

Obama, for all his faults (and I could go on and on) still seems to me to be better than the alternative was. That was all we had to go with, you know. There was nothing "good" out there. There rarely is. Paul would have been best for civil liberties, but he would have rocked the economy, rolled back civil rights to a ridiculous degree, and put a bullet in what little progress we've been able to make with health care. He just wasn't electable. McCain might have been, until they inflicted Palin on him. We'll never know, now. The rest were clown-shoes-of-the-week, all competing with one another to see just how far they could shove their own feet down their throat.

Plus, they're all either pretending to be, or actually are, religious crazies. I honestly don't know which is worse, but both are really bad.

If -- somehow -- you can get the republicans in congress to act responsibly -- you know, pass laws, get rid of bad law, undertake some moderation of their fringe drooling, muzzle the idiots who keep saying batshit crazy things about rape and pregnancy -- you could still win the next election. The signs aren't hopeful at this point, but the American people have extremely short memories, so it could still happen. I would vote republican; all they have to do is convince me they'd do better for the people than the democrats. I just... don't see any signs of that right now.

And people wonder why gun owners don't want the Feds to have a central database with all of our names, addresses, etc. in it. I'm all for background checks, but I'll be damned if I let the government develop a database they can "scour" like this for whatever purposes they deem fit in some nebulous future where the party I trust the *least* is in power.

While I don't really approve of this change it's not nearly as bad as the headline suggests. This doesn't mean that the CIA will have instant access to your bank transactions. Banks are required to file reports for specific suspicious conditions that are associated with money laundering and other financial scams. What they're talking about is giving the other agencies unfettered access to the database (FBI already has unfettered access).

I don't know. My in-laws needed 100k to buy a house so they got 10 10k cashier's checks from the bank cause the teller couldn't give them one check for more than 10k...

That is probably a bank policy and has nothing to do with suspicious transactions. You can go to the bank and ask for $100k in cash and, if they have it, they can legally give it to you. You just have to fill out a bunch of paperwork for any transaction greater than $9999.99. The purpose is to help combat money laundering. Its a whole heck of a lot harder to move around a bunch of cash if you can only deal with $9999.99 of it at a time. Or you just go out and buy a casino, which can easily launder hund

Exactly why are transactions over $10,000 considered suspicious and cataloged by the government?

However, transactions over $10,000,000 will not be reported by the bank to the government. If you have that kind of money to push around, you are an important and profitable customer, and the bank will use all kinds of bizarre financial instruments to ensure that the Feds never get a whiff of the transaction.

Hell, if you tell the bank that you want to burn down their building, they will give you a match.

Like most other government legislated thresholds, it hasn't been adjusted for inflation. It would be around $59,350 if it had been adjusted as computed by an online inflation calculator using 1970 (Bank Secrecy Act passage) as the base year. That's still low, but more reasonable than $10,000.

Rate of spending increase under Bush 43 wasn't nearly as big as Obama. You are reading leftist lying publications. They are lumping the $400 Billion Omnibus spending bill and $850 Billion stimilus under Bush's last year while both were proposed and passed after Obama took office. If you ACTUALLY follow when the spening increases took place and ignore the lies, it was all Obama, but I understand that viewpoint is unpopular.

Spy agencies are still not allowed to share most intelligence information arbitrarily, whether the subject is domestic or not. These roadblocks ensure the safety and reliability of each agency's intel, and provide confidence in policy decisions based on that intel (legislative, military, etc).

But spy agencies already could look at your financial information, independently. That is not a concern to me. Smart citizens already know Obomacare provides a stipulation that states, payments made electronically to health providers constitutes a waiver for the federal government to examine that individual's financial accounts from the bank who disbursed to the health provider. (So you have to pay in cash if you don't want the feds digging into your financial records because of a sore throat.)

What is a concern is that the intel each agency now has the access to that financial information regardless. And this concerns me because it can easily be used against a citizen. Say, you're behind on your student loans, the government can check your bank account, determine that you have funds to pay a monthly minimum they've decided you ought to pay, then they can order your physician not to provide health care to prevent you from spending that money on the doctor,... basically they won't LET you get your health care until you've paid your other dues...

Another cause for concern is that, well, the agencies are using the same intel. that's a bad paradigm. In the intel world, redundancy and duplication of data is a good thing. Unlike in computer science land, in intel, that kind of thing actually encourages data accuracy and confidence, it reduces the possibility of tampering, and is a specific tactical tool in international anti-intel. (Think about it like this: Texas Hold 'Em wouldn't be an easier game to beat if all the players didn't share a deck and also share a hand. And if an attacker manipulates the deck, all players are equally affected.)

So I'm wondering. What is the priority my government has to monitor my financial data? And why is it so important that all spy agencies need to share that data, from one single source, when they already were allowed to collect that data independently as their investigation warranted? Is this about stopping crime or is it about providing means to extract every cent from every citizen? If the government was having trouble tracking drug cartel finances before, how is this supposed to help? The cartels were already beating the system. So it affects the bad guys zero, and the good guys by one. Really, what is the priority here?

I realize facts are anathema to political discourse, but the president doesn't operate in a vacuum. Congress has just as much, if not more, blame than either Bush or Obama have. The sooner people see this, the sooner the messes can be cleaned up. Too bad it won't happen as long as The People are more concerned with Facebook, Twitter, et al.

Certain interesting financial transactions have been reported on for quite some time. This predates both Obama and Bush II. The only thing new here is perhaps the idea that people are actually looking at the information we've been collecting pretty much forever.

You're pretty tardy if you are trying to get your panties in a bunch over this situation.

Yeah, if they collect it they are going to data mine it sooner or later. That's pretty obvious. That's why you don't create the data to begin with.

Horse left the barn and the barn burned down there a long time ago.

Although I wouldn't mind getting back the $500 and $1000 bills what with inflation being what it is.

Got news for you, eliminating the $100 bill has been proposed occasionally as no-one has a need for such large money clips. Benefits said to include reduced drug traffic / organized crime due to larger stacks of cash needed with lower denomination currency and reduced counterfeiting -- as if N. Korea can't counterfeit a 20 dollar bill.

Real reason likely includes pushing toward a cashless society where all transactions can be tracked.

Financial institutions file more than 15 million "suspicious activity reports" every year, according to Treasury. Banks, for instance, are required to report all personal cash transactions exceeding $10,000, as well as suspected incidents of money laundering, loan fraud, computer hacking or counterfeiting.

They've been able to get this data through the IRS since before any of us were born. If you've ever made a transaction over 10k, they make you go through a bit of a process sometimes. This is the database of that process. It won't have yesterday's starbucks purchase, but it'll have something like the deposit withdrawal you made to put a down payment on your house. So it's not quite entire lives type stuff, but I could've sworn the IRS already did what these agencies are proposing to do, maybe they just suck at it, but the title of the article is over-dramatized in typical slashdot fashion.

Financial institutions file more than 15 million "suspicious activity reports" every year, according to Treasury. Banks, for instance, are required to report all personal cash transactions exceeding $10,000, as well as suspected incidents of money laundering, loan fraud, computer hacking or counterfeiting.

Keeping transactions below $10k is considered "suspicious," and can therefore result in an SAR filed against you. [wikipedia.org]